zwolanerd

 

Of all the games I would consider it hard to ruin, a side scrolling platformer is high on the list. How hard can it be? You make a world, drop a hero in it, throw in some things to avoid or kill and bam – done*. Whoever made this game (and I’ve already uninstalled it so I can’t check that for you) managed to ruin the whole genre as well as the most wonderful time of the year. Yes, the whole genre. It’s ruined now. Spoiled. Broken.

The first thing you notice when you fire up Santa vs Banker is the controls are so sluggish you might as well just close your eyes and mash buttons at random. For such simple controls  – it’s a three button game – you don’t actually have much control over ol’Santa. Trying to time a jump to avoid an enemy is useless, you just have to move and hope for the best. The graphics don’t suck too much, so there’s that.

I like a good story in my games, a nice tale to enjoy while I blast things or whatever. The story of this game is pretty simple. Santa, unable to pay his debts, is blasted out of the sky by a banker. Gifts are scattered all over the place, and Santa must collect them up again. Not that he has anywhere to put them as the banker blew up the sleigh.

Couple of points on this. Santa is estimated to be worth “infinite money” according to Forbes (yes really) and could easily pay off any debts. Also debt recovery means you want the items back to sell them and cover some of the debt. Blowing up the items makes no sense. Who gave a banker the means to blow up a sleigh? Why am I putting so much thought into this?

There’s a one hour trial available at Big Fish Games who also allow purchases as a gift if you have someone in your life who’s been pretty horrible to you this year.

 

*I realise making games is actually a lot harder than that, I was being witty. Very, very witty.

Tags: LynPlays

Written by: Lyn